Exploring the CC-mod

[Nilla]

No @irrelevant , the ropery has no upgrade.

This grumpy old lady will make an effort to be nice today. As you might have noticed, I was a bit frustrated the day before yesterday. But one day's brake have helped. Now the spirits are back.

First picture

I have upgraded some buildings; Taylor and Blacksmith. Both looks great.

I also know the use of candles. You can upgrade the mines. I suppose that you can go on and use the mines after they are empty (dig deeper). For that you need a lot of candles. It looks like it is the same with the quarries. I like that idea. These dead mines and quarries are ugly.

The building in the right corner is a resource depot. It has the same function as the @RedKetchup Stockerer, a storage to which you can move stuff manually. I like these kind of stores, very useful.

Second picture

I have made some new alcohol producers. A Winery and a distillery. I don't have the raw materials yet. Opposite to Ale and wine, it seems like the booze is sold in bottles.

Across the street from the orange maples is a Sugar House. I built it because the people don't want the maple sap from the trees. You have to make maple syrup. That's made in the sugar house.

The most impressing thing about the CC-mod are the many houses. There are a lot of different houses, most of them could be upgraded, even several times. I have started to make a "house exhibition" around the new marketplace.  I will show you more when I have at least one of each.

At the beginning, I had a theory about the crude tools. They are cheap and are produced very fast. So I thought, that if you run out of tools, you could fill the stores fast with these cheap tools and solve the problem. But it didn't work well.

You can see, I am short of tools here. It first started, as I upgraded the toolmaker and as it was upgraded, I started to make joist. (Needed for some buildings and as all the other specialized building materials; expensive to make, cheap to buy). I saw that the stores were getting short, but you know; I like experiments and I wanted to try the crude tools. First it worked well; the stores started to fill up, but as soon as I changed to iron tools; even a store of 100 crude tools were gone very fast and the shortage was there again. I had to build another toolmaker to catch up.

[Nilla]

I have been running the game a bit further, I don´t say playing, because I really don´t care about how the game goes. I will not play much longer, just finish my house exhibition. That takes some time, because some of the houses could be upgraded 3 times!

I buy all the seeds I can, to try all the different crops. Some are more expensive than others (2500-4000) .There are a lot of new things. The orchards are immortal and give a very good harvest. The vegetables all seems to be quit fast growing, more like beans than squash. Cotton, hemp, flax and maybe some more crops gives a much lover harvest (I guess 3 units for each square).

Meanwhile I have been studying the trade a bit more: There are 10 different merchants.

Company merchant - everything
Hauler - materials
Greengrocer- fruit and vegetables
Bakery - grain products
Imported goods - proteins
Fabrics and textiles - materials for clothes
Planter - seeds
Rancher - animals
Mercer - clothes
Smuggler - alcohol and tobacco

It looks like they arrive quite often, at least a bit later in the game and it seems like the time between the arrival varies. So far it has been impossible to predict when they arrive, also to make them arrive at the same time. But I have only 3 trading ports, so I am not really sure.

It might be a bit more difficult to build a large settlement based on trade with the CC mod, than the original version, but i am not sure. Maybe I will give it a try. There are many quite "useless" merchants in a long term game.

I can show you some new buildings; Warf and Ship: catch whales, lobster and seal, looks nice, about the same productivity as a good fishing hut, a Wind Mill, not better than the water mill and two very nice looking Quayside Homes (the same building, different kind with F)

[RedKetchup]

but i can say (by this screenshot) they made a really awesome job !!!

many things they added looks awesome. A couple other things are blah! ^^ but the most beatiful items deserve all the attention

[Nilla]

Yes, @RedKetchup most of the design is really great. It is sad that they didn't put the same effort into the balancing.

First picture

Now I will show you my house exhibition. I have tried to mark the different houses.

Together with the two original houses, there are 5 different kind of houses. Most could be upgraded 1, 2 or 3 times.

1A,2A= Tiny Shack, Tiny House (one upgrade)
1B,2B,3B,4B = Town Abode, Townhouse, Nice Townhouse, Fancy Townhouse (three upgrades)
1C,2C,3C = Country House, Nice Country House, Fancy Country House (two upgrades)
D= Log Cabin
1E,2E,3E,4E = Large Residence, Manor, Mansion, Estate (three upgrades)
And there is the Quayside House, I showed you in my last picture.

From many of those houses there are different types to choose between with the F. Different structure, color, roof........

Second picture

The house exhibition from the other side

Third picture

There is also a large variation of crops.

Summary of my impressions of the mod in this game:

The CC mod is really great, if you like to design a settlement. The possibilities are huge. Most buildings look really good.

Unfortunately the balancing of the production chains/trade values are bad for many products, especially the advanced building materials.  This makes the mod less interesting, if you more like the simulation-aspects of the game.

[Nilla]

I stopped my first CC game and as I said, I will try to build a trade based economy with the CC-mod. These are the limitations:

No farms
No orchards
No mines
No quarries

I was thinking about no schools for a while, but I have a feeling that it could be a bit tricky anyhow, with the many specialized merchants. And that is the thing I want to test.

First picture, start

I said; educated. And if I do, I normally mean everyone. I had two 9 year old, two 8 year old and one 7 year old from the start. The school was my first building, but with a hard start, there is no building materials, so it didn´t work out. Two girls are uneducated. I have planned a house next to the school. I will build it there later, and try to have one uneducated as the teacher. Isn´t that a great idea?

Second picture, 1 year gone by

Still a lot of homeless people, but there´s no hurry. No signs of the CC mod yet.

Third picture, year 4

First trading port just finished. There is also one not original building, an apiary. It seems like honey could replace grain for full health and I can sell the wax. 

Fourth picture, year 6

I have 3 "forest nodes  with each one hunter. I don´t know how you do it @irrelevant, with your high productive hunters, but normally one hunter catches 2 deer (sometimes only 1, seldom 3). I don´t know what I do wrong. But this seems to be an excellent place for a hunter. Don´t really plan to have one here long term, but I will test the spot. 3 flocks of deer just in front of it. Should work! or not?

Fifth picture, year 10

No, it doesn´t work. This hunter catches his two yearly deer, never more, never less, so far.

I have started to plan the commercial area. Most of the buildings not built yet are bank barns and root cellars. I want to use the hills for storage.

So far I sell firewood, charcoal, beeswax, meat cuts, tallow (I let a butcher increase the value of the venison) and frog legs (the shoreman have dug enough clay to build another charcoal burner, so I let him catch frogs, froglegs are worth 2)

[rkelly17]

I said; educated. And if I do, I normally mean everyone. I had two 9 year old, two 8 year old and one 7 year old from the start. The school was my first building, but with a hard start, there is no building materials, so it didn´t work out. Two girls are uneducated. I have planned a house next to the school. I will build it there later, and try to have one uneducated as the teacher. Isn´t that a great idea?

Wow! That is ambitious. On a hard start I usually aim for a functioning school before the first child born in the settlement turns 10. Very Occasionally I get the youngest of the original children in school. And, yes, I often start out with an uneducated teacher.

[irrelevant]

I have 3 "forest nodes  with each one hunter. I don´t know how you do it @irrelevant, with your high productive hunters, but normally one hunter catches 2 deer (sometimes only 1, seldom 3). I don´t know what I do wrong. But this seems to be an excellent place for a hunter. Don´t really plan to have one here long term, but I will test the spot. 3 flocks of deer just in front of it. Should work! or not?

No, it doesn´t work. This hunter catches his two yearly deer, never more, never less, so far.

That looks like a great spot! It should yield 800-1200/year. Maybe I'm just a deer whisperer.

[Nilla]

Yes, you certainly are, @irrelevant. I have no idea, how you do that. My special hunting cabin never produced more than 2 deer. Always some deer to be seen in the area, but the hunter were mostly somewhere else, mostly as I looked, on a spot where the deer just left. 

First picture, year 18

I will start with 5 trading ports and not build any more, until I can fill them with enough goods to buy a full big boat load. I don't have enough people for the big boats yet and have to stop my breweries, because I don't have enough cherries (in the CC mod you cannot brew apple ale).

I think that cherries for the breweries is the limiting thing in a big trading economy with the CC-mod.

- I have told you before, that there are 10 different merchants, only two of them bring cherries. That's the first limit.

-At this point I have enough wild vegetables, but in a larger settlement, you also have to buy vegetables. The only merchants, that bring fruit are also the only ones that bring vegetables. That's the second limit.

-I have to buy a lot of building materials, only two merchants bring building materials. The second one is the company merchant who also brings fruit and vegetables. This is the third limit.

-The traders don't get the ale at the breweries, only at the inns. I have no idea, how this works. How much ale can the ale-wenches  collect.

So I am sure, there must be other main trading goods beside ale. Charcoal, of cause. Than I have to use the merchants, try to increase the value of what they bring. These are my thoughts:

Company merchant - cherries, building materials
Hauler - building materials
Greengrocer- cherries, later also vegetables
Bakery - flour, bakeries make hardtack to increase the value (don't know yet if I will sell it or just use it for the population)
Imported goods - venison, butchers increase the value, I sell meat cuts and tallow
Fabrics and textiles - flax and wool, don't know the most profitable way for the textiles, maybe wool coats and linen or maybe linen clothes.
Planter, Rancher , Mercer , Smuggler - useless

Second picture, year 23

I haven't seen this shortcut before

Third picture, year 26

150 people, we're waiting for the big boats. I have started to replace the original wooden houses with CC-homes.

[rkelly17]

. . . . (in the CC mod you cannot brew apple ale). . . .

That's just plain weird. How can there be no cider, which was actually far more common than cherry "ale"? The colonists in North America would have been very, very upset if they couldn't have fermented apple juice.

[irrelevant]

Yes, you certainly are, @irrelevant. I have no idea, how you do that. My special hunting cabin never produced more than 2 deer. Always some deer to be seen in the area, but the hunter were mostly somewhere else, mostly as I looked, on a spot where the deer just left. 

The only other thing I can think is that perhaps there needs to be a house (and a barn! ) closer to the hunting cabin; the hunter may be spending his time walking back and forth to his home.

[Nilla]

The only other thing I can think is that perhaps there needs to be a house (and a barn! ) closer to the hunting cabin; the hunter may be spending his time walking back and forth to his home.

That might be right, only the other hunters have houses and barns close and they also use to shoot two deer each year.

I went on with my CC-trading-game and I must say: This is rediculous! 200k food accumulated in a couple of years! 

I thought it would be harder with those merchants, but they do arrive often. I counted the two last years and there where 8 merchants each year, to 5 ports.

In any case, I can tell, that the ale collection to the inns works very well. I have just built my second inn, but I am not shure it´s necessary, because it looks like the two ale-wenches from the first inn could collect all ale without problems. As I look, what they do, they are mostly doing other things. All breweries are very close to the inns, probably they would be more busy, if the breweries were more spread, but in such a case, it is also possible to increase the number to 4 at each inn.

I don´t know, if I want to go on with this game. As I said; I thought it would be tricky, but I don´t think it is. The many merchants are also a bit annoying, to 5 ports!    I find it harder to organize, that they all arrive at the same time, than in a normal game. What will be when the population grows and I need 20 ports or more? I don´t think I want to play such a game.